


Flesh Eaten

by yoshizora



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Genre: Body Horror, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 13:51:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14874953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoshizora/pseuds/yoshizora
Summary: In an unfamiliar land, Zeke and Pandoria find Mòrag barely clinging to life.Life clings to Mòrag in return, and something begins to happen that neither Zeke nor Pandoria can stop.





	Flesh Eaten

**Author's Note:**

> i took a lot of elements from my other Morytha story but hopefully this one's different enough

_“His Majesty is requesting your audience, Special Inquisitor.”_

She hears the voice, but it’s the sort of voice that belongs to no one, the kind that’s far too difficult to describe in how nondescript it is. It’s the voice that Mòrag finds herself focusing on as she slowly moves down the hallway, and it echoes again in the back of her mind.

_“His Majesty is requesting your audience, Special Inquisitor.”_

Mòrag impatiently shakes her head. She knows that. That’s why she’s trying to walk as quickly as possible… even though her legs refuse to move any faster as though she’s underwater.

Somehow, that makes more sense than the voice. The hallway stretches endlessly into darkness, and Mòrag continues moving onwards to see the Emperor.

 

* * *

 

Tantal’s ruins aren’t as depressing as this, Pandoria thinks to herself. She sighs out loud for the tenth… or twentieth, or thirtieth time, and stares up at the stormy skies. There are things that look like Aspids flying high up, and it makes her wonder if that means there’s _life_ thriving down here in spite of the derelict shambles the city’s been left in.

If they weren’t in such dire circumstances, she’d like to explore the place a little, see what’s around. But right now, all she can do is wait for Zeke to get up. He’s… not dying. She knows what he looks like when he’s dying. He definitely _isn’t._ So that’s something.

Even Turters is okay, having been protected from the fall within the safety of Zeke’s pocket. Pandoria has him in her palm, stroking his shell.

It’ll be alright.

“Ow, ow…”

She perks up and rolls her legs underneath herself to kneel beside Zeke.

“My Prince!”

“Five more minutes, ugh…”

Pandoria sighs and places Turters on Zeke’s chest. “I’m glad you’re fine. Turters is, too. Probably. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking, sometimes.”

Zeke manages to fold his hand into a fist and flashes a thumbs-up for Pandoria, and moves Turters back to his pocket. His eyes are still closed. Somehow, his eyepatch had gotten loose and presumably fluttered away to be lost forever as they had fallen down through the void and through the storm and into this… place.

He frowns, as he touches his face where the eyepatch had once been.

“Oi. Where’d it go?”

“I dunno. Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Well, that’s just _great._ ” At the last word, he heaves himself up to a sitting position, still rubbing his uncovered eye. Zeke yawns and stretches, as if he’s just waking up from a leisurely nap. Then, recollection snaps him back to focus, and he’s scrambling up to his feet before Pandoria can even check him over for any injuries.

“Wait— hold on a second! Forget the eyepatch, we’ve got to go find the others!”

“ _You_ hold on a second!” Pandoria grabs his arm before he can run off. “That was a seriously nasty fall! You know my barriers aren’t that strong. It couldn’t absorb all the impact when we landed.”

“It’s fine! We’ve survived worse, haven’t we?” Zeke shrugs his arm free and sets right to walking off in some random direction. Unable to find any other reason to make him sit down and rest for a moment— he really does seem perfectly fine, without even a scratch— Pandoria jogs after him.

No injuries…? Well, whatever. Better just be grateful about it than to question it. Maybe it’s one of those side effects that comes with having a part of Pandoria’s Core Crystal in him.

The streets are deathly silent, save for the constant howling of winds far above them. Zeke doesn’t even seem remotely interested in taking in the wonders of this ruined civilization, but Pandoria supposes that it doesn’t particularly matter when there are more pressing matters at hand.

They’re _below the Cloud Sea_ , where no one had ever been before in recorded history. There… used to be people down here, clearly. There were people with wondrous technology and stunning architecture that could nearly brush against the depths of the clouds above them. It’s kind of mind-blowing.

What happened to them?

“But you’re alright, aren’t you?” Zeke asks, looking down at Pandoria. Pandoria quickly nods.

“I’m a Blade! You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Hah! That’s what I thought. Still, what kind of Driver would I be if I didn’t ask anyway?”

“Aww. I didn’t know you had it in you to be so thoughtful.”

“Oh, shut it.”

A small smile creeps its way onto her face. They’ve fallen who knows how many peds straight into these decrepit ruins with no apparent way back up and no sight of the others around, but… it could be a lot worse, all things considered.

Zeke’s right. They’ve always survived worse. Even during that one time, when it seemed like they’d finally reached the end of their journey, they’ve made it and kept on going. It was technically thanks to Praetor Amalthus’s inexplicable timing and charity, but they made it nonetheless.

This is just an inconvenient bump in the road compared to everything else. Yeah, of course. Pandoria’s lightbulbs glow brighter and brighter until even Zeke takes notice.

“Hm? What’re you getting all excited about now?”

“Uh—“ Whatever joke was on the tip of Pandoria’s tongue is lost. She’s staring straight ahead at a slight figure slowly moving towards them at the end of the road, clumsily weaving around piles of rubble.

It’s dark down here. She can’t see it very clearly— Zeke can’t either, though he’s on high alert now, drawing his sword and moving in front of her.

The thing is getting closer, slowly. Very… very slowly. So slowly that Zeke even lowers his sword and straightens up. He exchanges a rather puzzled glance with Pandoria, and she dares to speak out loud to break the relative silence.

“… What is it?”

Zeke squints. Without his eyepatch he’d be able to see more clearly, Pandoria realizes. The silhouette is still too far away to see its details in full view, but then Zeke suddenly shouts in realization, nearly making Pandoria jump.

“ _Mòrag?!_ ”

 

* * *

 

_“His Majesty is requesting your audience, Special Inquisitor.”_

She knows. She knows. She knows. It’s why she hasn’t stopped moving all this time, determined to reach the end of the hallway to the throne room. She knows. She can’t stop until she’s there.

Her limbs feel as heavy as stone and there’s a persistent buzzing in her head that won’t go away. Then, another voice breaks through the din, one she’s actually able to put a name to.

Mòrag’s eyes focus, finally—

_“His Majesty is requesting your audience, Special Inquisitor.”_

And she isn’t quite sure what’s happening, but Zeke and Pandoria are right there, running towards her and yelling, and His Majesty is still waiting for her at the end of the hall.

When she opens her mouth to tell them to get out of her way, nothing comes out from her throat except a warm liquid that spills over her chin. The two of them stumble back in alarm. Oh, good. She can keep going.

No, actually, they’re even more aggressive now, grabbing her shoulders and still yelling her name.

_“His Majesty is requesting your audience, Special Inquisitor.”_

… Was it blood? Was that it? Maybe that’s why Pandoria looks so frightened and Zeke so frantic.

 

* * *

 

“What’s wrong with her?!”

“Hey! Mòrag! _Mòrag!_ How hard did you hit the ground?!”

“My Prince, what do we do?!”

“Argh– we’ll need Nia and Dromarch for this. Hold on. You know some first aid, don’t you?”

“Y-yeah, I’ve had to patch you up plenty of times when we were on the road. But this is different! You’ve never had wounds this bad! I don’t even know how she’s still alive— look at her _head!_ ”

Zeke feels his guts lurch.

 

* * *

 

That indescribable voice is silent now, and all she can hear is Zeke and Pandoria squabbling over… something. Maybe it’s one of their usual exchanges of friendly bickering. But either way, they still won’t get out of her way.

Although she can’t quite remember _why_ she had wanted them to get out of her way in the first place.

They’ve still got their hands on her shoulders as she lowers herself to sit down, too tired to keep moving. The streets are empty. Thunder booms overhead. Zeke and Pandoria crouch before her, staring intently at her face.

Ah, now she remembers. They _fell._

“… Where is Brighid?” she calmly asks. Zeke and Pandoria both shut up, as if astounded she could speak at all (of course she could speak, what do they take her for?) and they look around like Brighid would appear from behind one of the crumbling structures or piles of broken concrete at any second.

She doesn’t, of course.

“Probably wherever my eyepatch went,” Zeke grimly laughs.

“Prince! This isn’t the time for jokes!”

“Right. Yeah.” Zeke shakes his head so quickly that his head is a blur for a moment. “We don’t know where Brighid is. But, frankly, I’d say finding Nia and Dromarch should be our bigger priority right now. You… you know why, don’t you? Mòrag?”

Mòrag frowns and looks down at her hands. Her sleeves are torn and three of her fingers aren’t bending the right way, which bothers her more than it probably should. She should… snap them back to how they should be.

Pandoria immediately grabs her wrist before she can try to straighten them out with her other hand.

“Nope! Don’t touch those. We’ll let Nia fix those for you, ‘kay?”

“Are you all there, then?” Zeke waves a hand in front of her face. “You gave us a real fright, you know! Stumbling down the street like a bloody drunkard…”

But Mòrag doesn’t respond, trying to think over the first question. _Why_ do they need to find Nia and Dromarch before anyone else? What about Brighid? And why can’t she just straighten out her damn fingers?

“My swords.”

“I’ve got ‘em,” Pandoria pipes up. “I’ll just… hold onto these for you until you’re all patched up. Same with your cap.”

“Sometimes you’re too stubborn for your own good, Mòrag. I’ve got a feeling you would’ve kept walking until you fell flat on your face, if we didn’t find you first.”

“Yeah, listen to my Prince! He knows the first thing about not understanding one’s own limits.”

“Hey! Weren’t you the one who said this isn’t the time for jokes?!”

“I know, I know, but your set-ups are too good to not take.”

And Mòrag realizes that she can’t exactly feel those crooked fingers that she had wanted to straighten out. They don’t hurt at all. Pandoria’s still holding onto her other wrist.

_“His Majesty is requesting your audience, Special Inquisitor.”_

She wrenches herself away from Pandoria and stands up, ready to keep moving.

 

* * *

 

“She can hear us, can’t she?! She was talking to us just now! Asked where Brighid is and everything!” Zeke is trying to stand in front of Mòrag to halt her progress, but she only sidesteps him each time. Or, at least, she tries to. Her movements are sluggish and unsteady, far different from her usual grace and speed.

“I’m telling you, it’s her head! That wound— hold on, didn’t it look a lot worse a minute ago?”

“Forget it! We’ll just have to do this the hard way, then!”

And Zeke squares his stance, ready to catch Mòrag as she tries to move around him again. He grabs her around the middle, hoisting her off the ground and unceremoniously slinging her over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

Pandoria clicks her tongue in disapproval, but nods nonetheless.

“Ohhh, she’d totally skewer you for this if she was properly conscious.”

“Lucky for me she isn’t then, huh? And that you’ve got her swords. Anyway, this’ll make it easier to move along. It isn’t as though Mòrag’s in any shape to be walking on her own.”

Pandoria moves behind Zeke and reaches up to give Mòrag a sympathetic pat to a part of her head that isn’t caked in blood. “Don’t worry, Mòrag. I swear my Prince knows what he’s doing. Most of the time, at least.”

She says nothing, of course, although she slightly raises her head and stares at Pandoria. Pandoria shudders and quickly moves back to Zeke’s side, where Mòrag can’t make eye contact with her.

“Hopefully a reunion’s just around the corner. I’m sure the rest our chum are all fine.” Zeke drifts into thought, brows furrowed together as they continue walking. The street is relatively level here, but still littered with broken pieces that had fallen off buildings and collapsed bridges. “You know, it just occurred to me.”

“My Prince? What is it?”

“I bet I’m alive because… well.” He gestures to his chest, where a piece of Pandoria’s Core Crystal lies embedded. “You said it yourself. Your barrier couldn’t completely cushion the fall, and I was still knocked out for a good while. Sure, I was sore for a bit, but now I’m feeling as right as rain.”

“True, but I just assumed it’s your natural hardiness.”

“No doubt Rex is in one piece as well, just like me. All the Blades should be fine, Nia included. Nopon are _astoundingly_ resilient. No need to worry about Tora. And Poppi’s the toughest artificial Blade we’ve ever met.”

“Poppi’s also the _only_ artificial Blade we’ve ever met. Not counting the ones in Tantal who pinned us down, of course.”

“You know what I mean!”

“Yeah, I do.” Pandoria looks at Mòrag. She’s no longer moving, but when Pandoria glances behind Zeke, she sees that Mòrag’s eyes are still wide open. With another shudder, Pandoria turns forward again. “Mòrag is the only normal human out of all our friends, isn’t she? It’s a miracle she’s still alive at all, especially if she didn’t have Brighid with her when she landed.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it a miracle…”

“Huh?”

Zeke’s steps slow down. He looks upwards, to the crumbling buildings and the never-ending storm. “I didn’t think much of it before, but haven’t you noticed it, too? How different the air is down here?”

“Now that you mention it…” Pandoria takes a deep breath. It’s… different, certainly, but not in the way that the Elpys was different. It’s a different kind of different. “Isn’t it just the elevation? We’re a looooong way down from Alrest, after all.”

“It must be more noticeable to you, since you’re a Blade. Think, Pandy! What is it! How do you _really_ feel?!”

“I feel fine!” Pandoria snaps. Then, she pauses as realization dawns over her. “I feel… fine. More than fine, in fact. I feel like I could fry a whole Serprond with one zap. _Weird._ ”

Even disregarding the fall, they had just trekked all the way through the Cliffs of Morytha then immediately fought Jin and Malos. They were all pretty much exhausted by the time the platform had crumbled beneath them. But now, Pandoria doesn’t even notice any of the fatigue from before, and her tail swishes excitedly behind her.

“… It’s the ether!” she exclaims. “There’s more ether in the air than normal!”

“Right! That’s what I had thought, too! Why else would I have nary a scratch or bruise on me? I heal a bit faster already, what with your Core Crystal in me, but the concentrated ether down here must’ve sped it up.”

“So, with Mòrag…”

Once more, Pandoria glances behind Zeke.

Mòrag’s eyes are _still_ open. Damn it. Why does that have to be so creepy?

“She’s no Blade Eater or Flesh Eater, but my guess is that the ether must’ve kept her alive after she landed. Somehow.” Zeke waves the hand that isn’t holding onto Mòrag. “Or something like that. Etherology’s never been my best subject, and there sure as hell weren’t any textbooks that mentioned this place.”

“That would also explain why the wound on her head isn’t even bleeding anymore,” Pandoria says. “But… that’s not how ether works. People on Alrest don’t magically fix up their wounds super fast just from being exposed to the air. It takes the Arts of a healing-type Blade to do that sort of thing.”

“Well, we’re not on Alrest anymore, are we?”

“… True that.”

“At any rate!” Zeke adjusts his grip on Mòrag, adjusting her over his shoulder. “We should be glad that she’s alive at all.”

Pandoria nods in agreement.

“Put me down.”

They both freeze in place. Zeke looks to Pandoria, and Pandoria looks to Zeke. “Did she just…”

“Put me down,” Mòrag says again.

“—Putting you down, putting you down!”

Zeke and Pandoria fumble with Mòrag far too hastily. At some point, Pandoria might have accidentally smacked Zeke, and one of Mòrag’s elbows might have jabbed into Zeke’s gut, but they manage to carefully lay her on her back. Her eyes are _still_ wide open, and she certainly looks awake, but it’s difficult to tell whether she’s… all there, or not. Pandoria makes a face.

“It’s okay, Mòrag, you can blink anytime you’d like. Or take a nap. Yeah, maybe you should nap for a bit.”

“I’m not tired,” she says, frowning up at them.

“You should be!” Zeke says. “Seriously, the hell’s the matter with you? You’re even spacier than Finch in the mornings.”

“Prince! Be nice!”

“What? I’m just saying, is all!”

“You’re not even saying anything!”

As they half-heartedly trade jabs, Mòrag sits upright. She’s staring down at her broken fingers again— Pandoria notices this, and grabs both her wrists. This time, Mòrag doesn’t try to pull herself away.

“I already _told you_ , Nia will fix those!”

“Once we find Nia, that is. Until then, there’s really nothing we can do about…” Zeke makes a rather frustrated gesture and points at Mòrag with both hands. “Everything that’s wrong with you at the moment.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Pandoria nods. “My specialty is roasting things with lightning. I know some basic first aid, but I’m no healer like Dromarch is.”

Mòrag quietly considers this for a moment… or she simply hadn’t understood what they said. She slightly sways in place, and Pandoria lets go of her, but she seems to have forgotten about her broken fingers. That grotesque wound on the side of her head isn’t bleeding anymore, at least.

Zeke and Pandoria stare at her, crouching and waiting. Waiting for… Mòrag to say something, maybe. But she doesn’t. She says nothing, simply stares back with an odd vacancy in her eyes, so unsettling that Zeke is the first to stand up. He paces back and forth.

“Look, Pandy, I’m as worried about her as anyone else would be. But dragging her around isn’t gonna do her any good.”

“If she’s too heavy to carry, you can just say it. I doubt she’d notice.”

“No way! I’ve got some integrity to preserve, you know!” Zeke swipes through the air with an arm, and raises his fingers to his face. His face still feels oddly _naked_ without his eyepatch. “I think… we ought to stop and camp for a bit. You stay here with Mòrag. I’ll go look for some water, and maybe anything else that might be helpful to us. Sound good?”

Pandoria jumps up to her feet. “Hold on! You can’t just leave me!”

“This isn’t like the Elpys, Pandy! One of our chum is half-dead and completely helpless here! We can’t fix her up proper like Nia and Dromarch could, but we can at least stop her from stumbling around and bleeding all over the place.”

Mòrag is looking up at Pandoria, still sitting on the ground and gently swaying. She’s always so sharp, and focused, and intense… seeing her like this just makes Pandoria feel awful. So, Pandoria swallows back the lump in her throat and nods to Zeke.

“Alright… you’d make a _terrible_ nurse, anyway.”

“Ha! There’s that sharp tongue I’ve come to expect.”

“I’ve transferred as much ether as I could to your sword. That should be enough, in case you run across any hostiles. But if there’s any sort of emergency… you’d better believe I’ll come running.”

Zeke is already jogging off, and he raises a hand in acknowledgment. “Just remember! You’ve got to keep an eye on Mòrag!”

“Got it, got it!”

Then, all that’s left is the howling of the winds. Pandoria sits beside Mòrag and tries to suppress her initial reaction of revulsion when Mòrag stares directly at her. She defiantly stares back, then tilts her head.

“… Did you always have those flecks of blue in your eyes, Mòrag?”

 

* * *

 

_“His Majesty is requesting your audience, Special Inquisitor.”_

Damn it. Damn it. The Emperor is waiting and she’s keeping him waiting and how could she call herself Special Inquisitor if she can’t even make her way to the Emperor? Mòrag tries to shout that she’ll be there momentarily, once she can make her limbs obey her, but she’s utterly entranced by the faint reflection in Pandoria’s glasses and.

Is that her?

And Pandoria blinks and asks something. Mòrag tries to explain that His Majesty is expecting her, but her mouth won’t cooperate.

“Your eyes are…” Pandoria is saying, her brows pushed together in confusion.

Mòrag inwardly chuckles. Oh, Pandoria. Doesn’t she know that, Brighid is already…

_“His Majesty is requesting your audience, Special Inquisitor.”_

No, yes, she needs to focus on her duty and what must be done. Her throat feels impossibly thick as she struggles to make her body stand, but Pandoria is trying to keep her on the ground— why? Mor Ardain needs her. Their Special Inquisitor. She needs Mor Ardain. She can’t be who she is without her commitment to the Empire and surely they all must know that.

Whoever “they” are.

She sees herself in the reflection of Pandoria’s glasses, and sees the blue creeping out from the wound upon her head like roots, and sees the crescendo of Pandoria’s horror and confusion.

 

* * *

 

It emerges little by little in the way that the flowers in Gormott would take their time blooming. Pandoria scrambles back, mouth silently opening and closing, unable to do anything but watch as some sort of… growth sprouts from the deep gash, sealing off the wound.

Mòrag’s eyes were _most definitely_ not blue before.

“Uh, Mòrag…?” she squeaks. “You’ve got a… something… on your head.”

Mòrag twitches. Her neck is pulsating. That thing on her head is _blue_ , just like her eyes. But it stopped growing, and now there’s simply an odd protrusion sticking out of her like some sort of strange horn.

“… Yeaaah, that’s not normal.”

Hesitantly, Pandoria reaches out as though she’s contemplating poking it, but she pulls her hand back at the last second. Mòrag rubs at her eyes with her hand— the one that doesn’t have those broken fingers, and she actually looks slightly more alert than she was before that… thing, grew from her head.

… Is it in her _brain_ , too? Pandoria would really prefer not to think that hard about it.

The veins and muscles beneath the skin of her neck are still shifting and moving in ways far too unnatural to be dismissed as an oddity, and it’s clearly impeding Mòrag’s speech. She makes an odd gurgling noise and turns to Pandoria with those sheer blue eyes, not quite on the verge of panic but no longer completely sedated.

Pandoria helplessly raises her hands. “I don’t know! I really don’t know! This is way beyond my area of expertise!”

Oh, no, she’s trying to stand up again. This time, she struggles against Pandoria as she tries to keep Mòrag on the ground.

“Stop! Listen! We’ll— we’ll figure out what’s wrong with you, and fix you, once we catch up with Nia and Dromarch, okay?! You’ve seen what Nia’s capable of! If anyone can heal you, it’s her! We just— need to be patient for a little while longer and stay put, please!”

“Need to… find…” Mòrag slurs, and liquid ether dribbles over her lip, joining the bloodstains upon the front of her uniform.

“I _know_ we need to find everyone else! But you seriously can’t be moving around when you’re like this!”

All that ether…

Pandoria’s sorely tempted to scream for Zeke to come back.

There’s too much in the air. It’s… gotten inside Mòrag, somehow, and now it’s accumulating out of control, if Pandoria had to make an educated guess. The evidence is right there in the ether that Mòrag is currently drooling and the solid growth that flowered from her wound. It’s literally spilling out from within her.

“I’m _alright_.” Mòrag’s voice is distorted now, closer to a harsh growl than her smooth drawl, and Pandoria can no longer see anything behind the hazy blue that’s completely clouded her eyes.

“Damn it, Mòrag! You’re supposed to be the cool one!”

“Let me go.”

“Nuh-uh!”

And Pandoria strikes her with a spark of her own electricity, just enough to send her falling over and sprawled on her back.

Mòrag is no longer moving or struggling. But she’s breathing. She’s still breathing with heavy, labored breaths, and Pandoria can see that her tongue is turning blue as well. She sits beside Mòrag, knees pulled up to her chest, and buries her face in her arms.

It’s a hell of a lot different from those times Zeke had been injured from whatever strokes of bad luck had inflicted him. He’d always been so cheerful and gung-ho, even when he’d been knocked off cliffs or trampled by Arduns or chased by bandits. Looking back, he could’ve easily been killed in so many different instances, but his relentless spirit had always pulled Pandoria along in that same vein of headstrong tenacity.

Pandoria wonders if Mòrag had ever brushed elbows with death before. Surely not as closely as Zeke had, because she’s… still human, and Brighid’s Core Crystal is in one piece.

But it’s because she’s wholly human that things turned out like this, isn’t it?

“… Can you hear me?” Pandoria asks. She pokes her shoulder. Mòrag gives no indication that she’s aware. A pair of thin tendrils had broken through the back of her neck and are lashing about like snakes. The skin around them is turning as dark as ashes.

But then Mòrag turns her head, and opens her mouth as if she’s yawning. Her teeth are glowing blue now, too.

What the hell is she supposed to do about this?

“I’m not… really used to worrying about other people,” she says. She isn’t sure why she’s saying this. Maybe it’s just to stave off her own panic until Zeke comes back. “It’s always been just me and my Prince for as long as I can remember.”

“Actually, before we met you guys, we didn’t even have any friends.” Her shoulders heave once with silent, heavy laughter. “We were constantly traveling ‘cuz my Prince didn’t like staying in one place too long. You can’t really make long-lasting friends with that kind of lifestyle. Sure, we made acquaintances, and his charisma drew plenty of people in, but…”

“I guess, for me, I was just his Blade. I didn’t even think it was weird. Maybe anyone else might have thought it was lonely, but… I was honestly, truly happy, just traveling together with him.”

“But— now, I know what I’ve been missing out on all this time,” Pandoria sniffles, and wipes at her nose with the back of her hand. “I never had friends. There, I said it. My Prince didn’t, either. He’s over the moon with Rex, and Nia and Tora and Poppi are tons of fun, but they’re _kids_ , you know? I think it’s good for him to have a friend his own age. And you’re always so cool and collected, like his complete opposite…”

Mòrag closes her mouth.

“H-hah, oh, man, I’m doing that thing again where I talk about him instead of myself, aren’t I? Well… you’re— you’re also my friend. So… thanks, Mòrag. I swear we’ll save you, alright?”

Her head snaps up as Mòrag tries to speak. Whatever’s happening to her, it’s only speeding up now; the ether is creeping across her face, parts of it drying to form a sort of dark crust over her skin. The hand with the broken fingers is even more mangled now. Her glove is in tatters. Pandoria can’t even fathom what’s happening there.

It’s almost sort of fascinating, in a grossly morbid way.

“… Does it hurt?” Pandoria whispers.

Mòrag’s features twist. Her eyes and mouth are all but completely engulfed in the light of the overflowing ether. She’s… trying to nod, although the state of her neck is making it difficult.

Pandoria grits her teeth and grabs Mòrag’s arms, and begins to pull her up to her feet.

“Forget what I said! Uh, not the stuff about being friends, but about staying put!”

She’s done something like this before. But back then, it was Zeke slung over her back, not the Special Inquisitor of Mor Ardain with an… ether infection, and Pandoria tries very hard not to think about those weird whisker-like tendrils touching her when she braces Mòrag against her.

“Alright, let’s go find my Prince and everyone else!”

 

* * *

 

She saw herself in the reflection of those very round glasses and the grotesqueness of the infestation in her body— she can feel it, inside her, in the innermost parts of her organs, crawling and creeping and reaching out to the deep layers of her skin.

Head throbbing.

Tongue heavy.

Heartbeat crawling.

Reworking her body from the core.

It’s warm. Very warm. So warm it burns, in a different way from Brighid’s flames— no, this hurts, and Mòrag would scream if she could, because she can _feel_ the structure of her arm and her broken fingers being twisted by the ether that spreads within her but Pandoria doesn’t seem to notice. She’s completely focused ahead. Walking. Trudging along.

_“His Majesty is requesting your audience, Special Inquisitor.”_

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

 

* * *

 

They only make it a bit further down before it gets worse. Pandoria senses the abrupt spike in ether before it hits, and she drops Mòrag out of reflex with a gasp. Mòrag almost falls, but merely stumbles and lurches upright. More or less upright. The ground is uneven here, as if the road had been struck by a great force.

“Oh, shoot.”

Mòrag is reaching towards her with what used to be her hand, now more of a claw. Something is glowing in the hollow of her palm. An… opening of sorts, which Pandoria only gets a brief glimpse of before she’s swerving aside and away from her. She _sees_ ether in the air being drawn into the claw, and Mòrag spits out acidic blue.

Pandoria clutches the whipswords, backing off.

“Ohhh, Brighid’s definitely not gonna be happy about this.”

“ _Pandy!!_ ”

Pandoria could nearly cry from relief. But the relief is short-lived— Zeke is sprinting over, climbing over rubble and stumbling down the uneven rises in the street with… a crowd of _things_ lurching after him, their gaits unsteady and unsettling, almost like…

Like…

“Pandy, we’ve got companyyyyy!!”

Their eyes and mouths shine blue. Just like Mòrag. Pandoria is frozen in place, staring at them in sickening revelation, and doesn’t even notice Mòrag dragging her feet past her. Zeke’s eyes widen and there’s just _too much going on_ and there’s no time for him to ask what the hell’s happened to her, because the creatures are upon them and Pandoria is still trying to wrap her head around things.

Those are…

_People?_

No, they can’t be.

Zeke swivels on the heels of his boots and swings his sword in a wide horizontal arc. Lightning crackles. Two of the creatures are cleaved, but the others behind it don’t even slow down.

“Get Mòrag to safety! I’ll handle these things!”

“—Not on your own, you won’t! There’s way too many!”

“Then what’re we supposed to do!? _Run?!_ ”

“Isn’t that what you were already doing?!”

“… You’ve got a point!”

There’s no honor in fleeing from a battle. Maybe Mòrag would say something like that, maybe she wouldn’t, but she’d surely make an exception when their lives are on the line and those bisected creatures are already pulling themselves back together. Zeke slings the sword onto his back as he runs low, ramming his shoulder none too gently into Mòrag to scoop her up without breaking his stride, and frantically motions for Pandy to follow.

So they run, yelling in sheer exhilaration and terror as the creatures pursue them into the vast network of what used to be a city.

 

* * *

 

Her head feels like it’s splitting apart and there’s too much noise and she can’t stop spitting out ether, the taste of it foul in her mouth, so terribly different from the gentle warmth of Brighid’s ether, no matter how much she spits and screams there’s _so much of it_ seeping from her eyes and nose and mouth and ears from her pores unto her cracked skin slowly taking and slowly taking—

 

* * *

 

Although it works to Zeke and Pandorias’ advantage, as they’re able to run until they finally shake off the creatures and find refuge inside a building that doesn’t look like it’d collapse at the slightest disturbance. Neither of them are certain exactly how long they’d been running, only that it’d been a _while_ , and they’re at least closer to the looming shadow of the World Tree than they’d been before.

There are rows of seats in the room immediate from the entrance, but the rest of the rooms they discover down the narrow hallways have rusted beds and crumbling pieces of technology completely unfamiliar to both of them.

They pick a room with a narrow bed that looks more or less intact, and Zeke drops Mòrag onto it. She’s twitching horribly and now making odd clicking noises from the back of her throat, but she’s no longer thrashing about as she had been when they were fleeing the monsters.

“It looks like… this might’ve been a medical ward,” Pandoria slumps into a sagging armchair in the corner of the room, catching her breath. “Or something.”

“I doubt any medicine we might find here would be useful.” Zeke leans against a wall, resting his forehead on his arm. “All this stuff is downright ancient. Tantal’s ruins are totally modern compared to this place.”

The bed creaks and groans beneath Mòrag. She’s still twitching— she’s still changing, and Zeke slams his fist in frustration.

_”Damnit!”_

“You figured it out too, right…?” Pandoria tentatively asks, wringing her hands together. “The things that were chasing you, and whatever’s happening to Mòrag…”

“Those used to be _people!_ ” Zeke’s back is turned, but she can hear the distress in his voice, as rough as nails. “What happened down here?! Could they have not been saved?!”

Mòrag groans. They both automatically look to her, but she isn’t trying to roll off the bed or anything.

“We can’t worry about them when we’ve already got Mòrag to think about,” Pandoria slowly says. She gets up to her feet and goes to stand beside her. She stares down at Mòrag, biting her lip. The parts of her skin that haven’t hardened over only look more pallid and sickly beneath the light Pandoria gives off. “Whatever happened, it happened a long, looooong time ago.”

“I wonder… did they suffer the same? Are they suffering now, as they are?”

“You’re being a real downer right now.”

“Is it so wrong to have some empathy?!”

“Of course not!” Pandoria gingerly rests a hand on Mòrag’s shoulder. She feels a bump beneath her uniform, like something’s straining to break through. “But we need to focus on figuring out how we’re gonna find the others and climb up the World Tree. Being sad is a major motivation-killer, just saying.”

Zeke slides down along the wall to sit on the grimy floor, eyes dark in thought. He’s… brooding. He’s actually brooding. Pandoria would laugh at that if their situation didn’t suck so much in general.

A minute stretches into an eternity. Distant storms continue to howl with no sign of ever calming. The only noises in the room come from Mòrag, as she writhes and twitches on the creaking bed. Pandoria doesn’t like the silence, not at all, and she nervously grips Mòrag’s swords as she speaks up.

“So… got any thoughts you wanna share, my Prince?”

He slaps a hand against his knee, abruptly perking up as if a switch had been flipped.

“I completely forgot, when we were being chased! Before those things found me, _I_ found…”

A deep breath, for a dramatic pause. Pandoria leans forward expectantly.

“You found…?

“I found…!”

“What is it?!”

“ _My eyepatch!!_ ”

“No way?!”

Zeke jumps up to his feet, boots thumping against the floor so hard that dust falls from the ceiling. Indeed, it’s his eyepatch that he draws from his pocket with a flourishing gesture, and he already looks considerably more cheerful as he fixes the string around his head.

“Much better! Things are beginning to look up already, eh?”

“Hey, maybe your bad luck is turning around for a change! But,” Pandoria points to him with both hands. “Did you find anything else? Like, I dunno, water?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve got some of that, too. Here— I scooped it into this bottle I had on me. There was a puddle.”

“Eww, I’ll pass on that.”

“We oughta give it to Mòrag.”

“… She’ll murder both of us if she finds out we tried to feed her puddle water.”

“That’s why we won’t speak of this ever again, after this is all done and over with!”

Zeke strides over and snaps his fingers above Mòrag’s face. She doesn’t respond outwardly, but she makes another dry rattling noise that hardly sounds human.

“Listen to that! She’s bloody parched! Besides, I’ve had water from questionable ponds and puddles plenty of times before.”

“I _know!_ I remember!”

“And I’m healthy as an Ellook, aren’t I?!”

“Maybe that’s the real reason why you nearly died that day when the Praetor took us in.”

Zeke makes a scoffing noise and removes the cap from the bottle. “Say what you like, I’m just helping out a friend. So _there._ ”

“I’m telling you, this is a bad idea…”

Without further ado, he tips the bottle and pours a stream of the somewhat cloudy water into Mòrag’s open mouth.

Her reaction is instantaneous. She shoots upright, knocking the bottle from Zeke’s hand— Pandoria shrieks, or perhaps it was _Zeke_ who shrieked, and then she’s on the floor before either of them can react.

Mòrag drags herself to a corner and _hisses_.

“—Don’t say ‘I told you so’!” Zeke says, pointing a finger warningly to Pandoria. She helplessly shrugs. They cautiously approach Mòrag, hands held up in a placating gesture. But not at all unlike a cornered animal, she hisses again and swipes at them with the arm that had become claw-like.

“No! Bad Mòrag! No hitting!” Zeke jumps back out of her reach.

“You got any other brilliant ideas now, my Prince?!”

Zeke’s eyes fall upon a tangled pile of cables hooked up to something behind the bed. He rubs his chin, contemplating, while Pandoria continues to try calming Mòrag to no avail.

“… I’m gonna need you to hold her down. Think you can handle that much, Pandy?”

“Of course I can! Alright Mòrag, get over here—“

 

* * *

 

Her limbs no longer feel quite so heavy as she walks down the hallway. Mòrag adjusts the cuffs of her sleeves and her collar, consciously keeping her breathing slow and steady to offset her pounding heart. Why… is it pounding? She’s hardly nervous. The Emperor is family, after all, but… she’s not sure _why_ he had summoned her.

Perhaps it would be good news. Perhaps it would be bad news. Perhaps it would be neither, and she’s simply here to receive an assignment.

She’d reached the end of the hall. That voice that was once there is no longer here, only the familiar doors that open to the throne room.

_“His Majesty is requesting your audience, Special Inquisitor.”_

Finally, it’s time.

“I am here.”

With that, the doors open and she enters.

The Emperor, so striking and grand upon the throne, gently smiles to her as she approaches.

“Mòrag.”

She kneels.

“Father.”

 

* * *

 

It’s a rough and messy job but it’ll do. They manage to wrap Mòrag up in those dusty cables from her shoulders to her knees, somehow, in spite of all her thrashing and hissing.

Her face is all but unrecognizable now. That growth on her head glows brighter than it had before.

And so Zeke and Pandoria leave the building that once served as a hospital for this world’s former inhabitants, dragging Mòrag along by the cables. Here and there they take turns carrying when the ground is too uneven or unstable to drag her over; progress is slow, but they gradually draw nearer to the World Tree.

Its roots have all but rendered the area around it into an utter wreck. Traversing the streets only become more difficult the closer they get, and the closer they get the more Mòrag struggles against her binds.

The biggest miracle would be how they haven’t encountered any more of the creatures that had been chasing Zeke before, but neither of them dare to mention that out loud.

Instead, they try to preoccupy themselves with a game, one that they’ve played plenty of times before when it was just the two of them traveling together.

“I spy with my shining eye… something gray.”

“Is it that pile of rubble over there?”

“Nope!”

“How about that other pile of rubble?”

“Yep!”

“Okay, my turn! I spy with my shining eye… something green.”

“Is it the sky?”

“Got it in one.” Pandoria sighs. “This game really isn’t as fun when everything around here’s either gray or green.”

“Hey, Mòrag, wanna play?” Zeke glances over his shoulder. Mòrag spits out a mouthful of liquid ether and hisses, still straining against the cables.

“I’m gonna put that down as a ‘maybe’.”

Pandoria hops up onto an enormous slab of concrete that had fallen from a ruined overpass. She looks around them, scanning their surroundings.

“Oh! _Oh!_ I spy with my shining eye, something distinctly noponic!”

Zeke grins excitedly. Seems like his terrible luck really did make a turnaround in this place, despite the odds. “Tora! About bloody time!”

“Just on the other side of this huge drop that I can’t even see the bottom of! And… Nia! And Dromarch! They’re also there!” Pandoria stands and waves her arms, shouting. “ _Heeeey! Guuuuys!_ ”

Those small silhouettes in the distance stop moving. Pandoria can practically envision Nia squinting in that way she usually squints, and that might’ve been the sound of Tora shouting. Then, Nia’s waving too, hopping up and down and gesturing wildly.

“I think they’re gonna try to find a way over here!” Pandoria calls down to Zeke, then she hollers. “ _We’ll wait here!!_ ”

Her voice carries across the distance, echoing against whatever lies at the bottom of this great chasm that had been carved out by the World Tree’s roots. There’s a rumble somewhere— maybe a building collapsing, or something else, but they’re too relieved to put much thought to it.

Somewhere, in a tunnel that had partially caved in, several heads lift and turn in the direction that noise had come from.

 

* * *

 

“Do you know why you are here, Mòrag?”

“Because I am the Special Inquisitor.”

The Emperor leans upon the throne, one leg folded over the other, and scrutinizes her. Mòrag doesn’t even waver beneath his heavy gaze. She stares straight ahead, resolute as she had always been.

“And you would gladly give your life to the Empire, if that is what is demanded of you.”

She answers without hesitation, “Yes.”

“My daughter…” He looks so sad. Why does he look sad? She can’t imagine why. “You cannot stay here.”

“But.” Her brows furrow. “This is where I am needed.”

“Your life belongs only to you. Take it, and treasure it.”

“Father?”

“Go.” The Emperor waves a hand and the walls begin to lurch. Mòrag feels dizzy, as if she’d been struck across the head, and her vision begins to blur. “It is not your time.”

 

* * *

 

Shouting. So much shouting. Nia is shouting, and Zeke is shouting, and Pandoria is shouting, and Tora’s _meh meh mehs!!_ weave between each distinct voice. Thunder booms in the sky. Lightning fills the air, visible even behind her eyelids. The smell of burning rot is heavy.

Nia’s shouting is the loudest, and Mòrag realizes it’s because she’s kneeling right beside her.

“—To your left! No, not _my_ left, Shellhead! Argh— Pandoria, quit worrying so much about the barriers! You’ve got to help him out!”

“What does it look like I’m doing?!”

“Lay off, Nia! We’re doing— urgh— the bloody best we can with what we’ve got!”

“Meh meh meeeeeh!!”

“And keep the ether coming, Dromarch! I think she’s almost…!”

“Of course, my lady!”

Is she dreaming? Maybe… it’s just a dream. Everything in her body feels like it’s been run through with thousands of minute blades, and her head— her _head_. She had never experienced this brand of pain before.

And besides that, there’s a foul taste that coats the entirety of the inside of her mouth. Vomit, maybe.

“I’ve… got it!” Nia is shouting. “All the ether’s out!”

Then, she’s being roughly shaken and lightly slapped across the face.

“Mòrag! Oi, Mòrag! You hearing me alright?!”

“M-My lady, please be more gentle!”

Her eyes snap open.

Nia immediately lets go of her and falls back onto her haunches, loudly exhaling in relief. “Wow, that was _rough._ Even the Emperor was easier to fix up. I might need a catnap…”

“Like hell you’re gonna nap!” Zeke yells. “If you’re done fixing Mòrag, come give us a hand!”

Mòrag turns her head. Zeke, and Pandoria, and Tora are fighting off… creatures. Creatures she had never seen before. She turns back to Nia, still trying to understand what’s going on and why her body feels so… odd. Like her skin isn’t her own skin, and her bones aren’t her own bones. Maybe it’s just the lingering bile in her mouth that’s throwing her off.

The memory of plummeting through the air persists in the back of her mind, but it’s quickly drowned out by everything else that’s going on. Nia is standing up now, reaching for Dromarch’s twin rings.

“You should rest up a bit,” she’s saying to Mòrag. “I dunno what exactly it was that had gotten inside of you, but… ugh, nevermind! Just stay put!”

Before Mòrag can even respond, she’s running into the fray with Dromarch, swinging wildly at the monsters. Mòrag sits up and looks down at herself. Her left sleeve is nothing more than threadbare tatters, and her armor pieces are cracked in places. Her gloves are missing, too. She reaches up to touch her head, realizes her cap isn’t there, but then sees that it’s been placed next to her on the ground along with the whipswords.

Her swords…

“Brighid,” she says out loud, her voice weak.

Brighid is alive, somewhere. The swords are proof of that. Reassurance washes over Mòrag like a thick fog, and she’s slowly getting up to her feet without even thinking of it.

None of the others are glancing in her direction, too preoccupied with the monsters. There’s… five of those things. Zeke and Nia are holding up well enough, but Tora’s clearly struggling without Poppi.

Mòrag picks up the whipswords, reverently stroking the embedded crystals with her thumbs. Their glow is comforting, as is their warmth.

The weight of the cap is familiar upon her head. _Now_ she feels much, much better. Mòrag rolls the stiffness out of her shoulders and neck, adjusts her grip on the swords, and walks towards their battle.

The others stop in confusion when blue flames engulf the monsters. They screech and writhe, and fall to the ground as they’re incinerated to ashes.

“Oi! Didn’t I tell you to rest up?!” Nia stomps her foot.

“Apologies.”

“—Mòrag!” Pandoria cries out, and she barrels into her, tightly wrapping her arms around her middle. “You’re all better!”

To her horror, Zeke isn’t far behind Pandoria; he joins the hug with the force of a battering ram. She squirms in discomfort.

“I… yes? I’m quite alright. If you could both let go of me now…”

“Hahaha! _There_ she is! It’s good to have you back, Mòrag!” Zeke shouts right into her ear, thumping her shoulder.

Mòrag grimaces. “Back from where, exactly?”

“Huh?” Pandoria slightly pulls back to look up at her. “You mean… you don’t remember?”

“Save the heartwarming reunion for later, guys,” Nia snaps. “We’d better keep moving, in case there’s more of those things lurking around the corner.”

“Tora’s feet too tired to keep walking… can Tora ride on Dromarch’s back?”

“Only if my lady permits it…”

“Nope.”

“Meeeeh! Nia being a big bully!”

Pandoria doesn’t immediately let go of Mòrag’s arm as they all continue on the long trek to the World Tree. “Hey, are you serious? You don’t remember what happened?”

Mòrag frowns. The harder she tries to think about it, the less she knows. The last thing she remembers is falling and… not much else. “I was unconscious for quite some time, I’d assume.”

“Er, something like that,” Zeke says. “You had a really nasty wound on your head. Even Nia looked ill when she saw it.”

“A _wound_ is one way to put it,” Pandoria mutters.

“Ah. Should I ask Nia for the grisly details, then?”

“No no, no need!” Pandoria shoots _a look_ to Zeke, but he only shrugs. How exactly do they even explain everything that had happened? They don’t even know what exactly it was themselves. Dromarch had agreed it must have been the strange ether down here taking root within her body through her open injuries, but…

Neither of them will be able to forget the sight of Mòrag stumbling down the street with a large chunk of her head caved in.

She should have been dead from that.

“Perhaps I would be better off not knowing, then,” Mòrag says, and she sighs when Zeke and Pandoria eagerly nod in agreement. “At any rate… I thank you both.”

She lightly tugs her arm free from Pandoria and jogs to catch up with Dromarch. Zeke and Pandoria both exhale in unison, shoulders slumped.

“We’ll have to tell her everything eventually, won’t we?” Pandoria asks.

“Yup. If not to her, then to Brighid.”

“Ohhh, that’s gonna be even less fun.”

They stare at Mòrag’s back as she talks with Dromarch. Her uniform is in a sorry state and still stained with blood and ether, but she’s _alive_ and well. All in all, it’s like everything that had happened doesn’t even matter anymore. Maybe it doesn’t. Hopefully they’ll never have to come back down to this place after they’re able to return to Alrest.

Pandoria’s bulbs are glowing brighter. She fondly smiles, and Zeke tilts his head.

“What is it now?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking how nice it is to have friends.”


End file.
